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Myrtle Bennett
Myrtle Bennett, née Myrtle Stevens, was a student at Shimer College in the Seminary period, graduating in 1880 and subsequently serving in the faculty. She is the namesake of Bennett Hall. In 1884, she married John Chase Bennett, a freshly-minted homeopathic physician. In the 1910s, she promoted the first 5-gallon steel pail, as head of a company later known as Wilson & Bennett.http://books.google.com/books?id=_zn3mGYYu-QC&pg=PA354 Mentioned Profiled *in "Bennett, John Chase, M.D.", in Biographical cyclopædia of homœopathic physicians and surgeons, 1893, p. 68: *:Miss Myrtie A. Stevens, then Professor of Elocution in the Mount Carroll (Illinois) Seminary, became his wife on October 8, succeeding his graduation, and has since been a full half of the team. They have had two children, a daughter, deceased, and Stevens A. Bennett, now two years old. *in "Mrs. Myrtie A. Bennett", by Z. Hartman, in System: The Magazine of Business, March 1920, pp. 503-504: *:MRS. MYRTIE BENNETT *:Who built a business threatened with failure into the biggest of its kind *:TAKE a struggling business of manufacturing steel barrels, subtract from it the benefits of careful management and water-tight business methods, and reduce it to the verge of bankruptcy. Then add to it one wide-awake woman with limited business experience and no experience at all in industrial organization. What's the answer? *:When this problem in higher mathematics was submitted to members of the iron- and steel-manufacturing industry around Chicago in 1910, it lifted up its voice as one man and shouted, "Failure— complete smash! Ask us a hard one!" The ready mathematicians had reason and common sense on their side telling them that no woman could possibly handle a business of manufacturing steel barrels, be it solvent or insolvent, and succeed. *:But Myrtie Stevens Bennett, the woman involved, had learned her arithmetic in another school. By far the largest creditor of the company, she had put in her money five years before on the understanding that she was to furnish the chief financial backing; the time had come for her to assume active management of the Wilson and Bennett Company, or to lose every bit of the amount she had invested. And she could ill afford the loss. *:She steadily resisted the suggestion that the business be thrown into bankruptcy and the creditors be allowed to pick the bones. In imagination she saw the factory closed even for a few weeks never to open again. It didn't seem fair to the other creditors. And besides, she saw possibilities in the business. She quietly settled with ihe other creditors and took charge; she was perhaps the first and may even yet be the only woman in the country to manage a sheet metal factory. *:Among the mathematicians of the industry a few sages gave the business a month of existence in her hands; others thought she might last three months. Mrs. Bennett, however, has lasted 10 years so far, and gives every sign of prolonging her regime until she gets ready to turn over the flourishing business to her children. She has built up the biggest business of its kind in the United States; her plant turns out approximately 10 containers a minute, approximately 1,000,000 steel containers a year. And these containers include oil pumps, galvanized tanks and fire extinguishers—Mrs. Bennett furnished thousands of barrels to the A. E. F. during the war. *:When she took over the business, Mrs. Bennett did not start out on a lavish scale. She kept every detail in her own hands, inspecting every bill, letter and invoice that came in or went out of the office. She handled the company's financial crisis with such skill and discretion that few of its customers ever realized it had been threatened with bankruptcy. But among suppliers it retained its tradition of financial "shakiness" for a while and credit was closed to it. That meant paying cash for everything; it was more of a task than it is to-day for Mrs. Bennett. But she still discounts all of the bills, though credit has been many years restored. *:A PRODUCTION PROBLEM AND HOW SHE MET IT *:Another big task confronted her: to make the business profitable she felt the need of a change in production methods, which in turn must overturn the whole plan by which the products had been marketed. *:The concern had been handling small orders for barrels and galvanized tanks. *:Many of these small orders were for other manufacturers. "Why use expensive labor and machinery to cut 25 to 50 tanks for one customer when with a very little extra expense 200 or more could be cut?" was the way Mrs. Bennett argued. With a vision of big-scale production, she started a vigorous campaign against these practises; and she vanquished them. By the end of the first year the tanks and barrels she manufactured were being cut a uniform size by a standardized process. *:A GOOD-SIZED JOB FOR WOMAN OR MAN *:The job was complicated by the fact that the manufacture of steel barrels was then in its infancy; Mrs. Bennett scurried around to get machinery specially patented and made for her factory and to find men familiar with the new welding process to teach it to her workmen. In the process, she picked up more than a smattering of mechanical knowledge. "I'll say she's a regular machinist," testified one of her mechanics the other day as he reached into his back pocket for his Mail Pouch. "She can show up a lot of guys around this shop." *:Mrs. Bennett further proved her versatility in financing the business. She based her financing on common sense and accurate cost-accounting, supplanting the guesswork which had prevailed before her regime. *:In the reorganization, Mrs. Bennett did not overlook workers. She is a great believer in the value of knowing all about her employees, so that she can place valuable men where they can make themselves even more valuable. And she succeeds. *:"If a man shows himself any kind of a worker I never let him go," she explains. "If he is a misfit, I shift him around and find the place that fits him best. As a rule, he makes good there." *:In spite of its heavy handicaps, the business made money from the minute Mrs. Bennett took it over. And it grew so rapidly that she early decided it must have more room to expand. So she moved it from the congested factory district to its new two-story plant covering 40,000 square feet in the outskirts of the city. *:Soon the factory quadrupled its original output. Within a few years, the working space and capacity were doubled. And now Mrs. Bennett is planning to add a third addition of the same size—40,000 square feet—to accommodate enough new machinery to turn out 8,000 paint pails a day. *:All the time she was wrestling with the big outstanding problems of her business, Mrs. Bennett found time to attend to the smallest details and even to plug up petty leaks here and there. How did she find time for it all? By starting work at 7 a. m. or thereabouts, and calling it a day at any tirfle from 8 p. m. to midnight. Once she even substituted for the watchman, who was ill. *:Of late, however, she has indulged less than formerly in the 15- and 18-hour day. "We are doing from 8 to 10 times as much business now as we did 10 years ;go," she explains. "That means the plant has grown so large that neither I nor any other one person can handle it alone. When I first started I hadn't the money to pay big salaries, and so had to attend to all the details myself. Now the long hours are unnecessary; it is easier to run a big business, I have found, than a small one. Everything gets specialized and that relieves the pressure." *:Mrs. Bennett has two sons, whom she has trained in the business, so that they are now able to help carry the burden of management. Her daughter is to be initiated into its mysteries when college days are over, for Mrs. B nnett staunchly believes that every woman's education should be rounded off with a good working knowledge of business. *:Aside from a substantial interest in symphony concerts and an occasional woman's club meeting, Mrs. Bennett's chief diversions are her children and her household. She insists that she is a better housekeeper than a business woman! *:But when she wants real, honest-to-goodness thrills and a regular good time, there's nothing in the world like the factory to supply them. *:Z. HARTMAN References